Congratulations to all the 2021 winners of the 25th annual Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards for Jazz Journalism. Professional journalist members of the JJA made open nominations in a first-selection round; those who received the most nominations advanced to the finalists’ ballot, and JJA’s professional members voted on them to arrive at these honorees.
Our congratulations, of course, to all the 2021 Nominees for Jazz Journalism in all categories. And please click the photos to expand them — the wonderful images here reward much larger presentation.
The 2021 JJA Jazz Awards is made possible with support from Joyce & George Wein Foundation, Jazz Foundation of America, Century Media Partners LLC, Festival International du Jazz de Montréal, HighNote Records, Inc./Savant Records, Inc., Carolyn McClair Public Relations, Jazz Promo Services, and Braithwaite & Katz Communications.
Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism
KEVIN WHITEHEAD
Jazz critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, author
Nominees: Howard Reich, Nate Chinen, Marc Myers, Paul De Barros, Ben Ratliff
KEVIN WHITEHEAD is jazz critic for NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where he’s filed over 750 reviews since 1987. He has written about jazz since 1979 for publications including Coda, JazzTimes, Down Beat, the Baltimore and Washington City Paper, Village Voice, de Volkskrant (Netherlands, where he lived in the late 1990s), Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Reader, and on the web for Point of Departure and The Audio Beat, among others. He is the author of New Dutch Swing, Why Jazz? A Concise Guide, Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: You Have to See It (with the photographer Ton Mijs), and Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, a nominee for the JJA’s 2021 Book of the Year Award. He was also principal editor of Bimhuis 25: Stories of Twenty-Five Years at the Bimhuis. His work has appeared in anthologies including Jazz: The First Century, The Gramophone Jazz Good CD Guide, Mixtery: a Festschrift for Anthony Braxton, Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006, and Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro Black and Other Solar Myths. Kevin has taught jazz history at the University of Kansas and Towson University.
Documentary of the Year
Billie, directed by James Erskine
Nominees: Buster Williams Bass to Infinity, directed by Adam Kahan; Motian in Motion (Paul Motian), directed by Michael Patrick Kelly (Aquapio Films); Universe (Wallace Roney documentary), by Sam Osborn & Nick Capezzera
Publication of the Year
DOWNBEAT Magazine
Nominees: AllAboutJazz.com, JazzTimes, The New York City Jazz Record
Blog of the Year
DO THE MATH
By Ethan Iverson
Nominees: Rifftides, by Doug Ramsey; JazzWax, by Marc Myers; WBGO.org, Nate Chinen, Dir. of Editorial Content
Podcast of the Year
JAZZ UNITED
From WBGO, hosted by Greg Bryant and Nate Chinen
Nominees: The Checkout from WBGO, hosted by Simon Rentner; Burning Ambulance, hosted by Philip Freeman; Straight No Chaser – A Jazz Show, hosted by Jeffrey Siegel
Live-Stream Producer of the Year
VILLAGE VANGUARD LIVE-STREAM
Directed by Mike Larson, produced by Deborah Gordon and Jed Eisenman
Nominees: The Jazz Gallery Online: The Live-Stream Concerts, produced by Rio Sakairi, the Jazz Gallery artistic director; HotHouseGlobal Livestream, produced by consortium organized by Marguerite Horberg, founder/CEO of HotHouse; Force Majeure Brunch, live stream on Facebook, produced by Brandee Younger & Dezron Douglas; Tune of the Day, on Facebook, produced by Fred Hersch
Book of the Year About Jazz
LIFE IN E FLAT
(Cymbal Press) by Phil Woods with Ted Panken
Nominees: Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure, by Maria Golia (Reaktion Books); Bebop Fairy Tales: An Historical Fiction Trilogy on Jazz, Intolerance, and Baseball, by Mark Ruffin (Rough In Creative Works); Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time, by Philip Clark (Hatchette); Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole, by Will Friedwald (Oxford University Press); Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, by Kevin Whitehead (Oxford University Press)
Robert Palmer-Helen Oakley Dance Award for Excellence in Writing in 2020
TED PANKEN
Nominees: Nate Chinen, Maria Golia, Giovanni Russonello
Marian McPartland-Willis Conover Award for Career Achievement in Broadcasting
GARY WALKER
Photo by WBGO
Nominees: Rusty Hassan, Alisa Clancy, Arturo Gomez, Sid Gribetz
Lona Foote-Bob Parent Award for Career Achievement in Photography
STEVEN SUSSMAN
Nominees: Peter Gannushkin; Robert Sutherland-Cohen; Lauren Deutsch; Alan Nahigian; Luciano Rossetti
Photo of the Year
Riccardo Pittau by LUCIANO ROSSETTI
Riccardo Pittau e Gli Amici di Matteo, Campanari di Locusantu, Isole che parlano festival, 2020, Luogosanto (SS), Sardinia, Italy © Phocus Agency
Nominees: Renaud Garcia-Fons by Urszula Las; Steve Noble by Pavel Korbut; Wu Wei and Klaas Hekman by Joke Schot; Ernest McCarty by Nate Guidry
Album Art of the Year
DAVID STONE MARTIN for Bill Evans - Live at Ronnie Scott's
from Resonance Records
Nominees: Clairelaurâ and Nubya Garcia for Source (Nubya Garcia, Concord); Ian Carey for Fire In My Head: The Anxiety Suite (Ian Carey Quintet +1, Slow & Steady); Steven Erdman for Jerry Granelli Trio – Plays Vince Guaraldi & Mose Allison
(RareNoise); Swirling (Sun Ra Arkestra, Strut); Katia Engel for Trout in Swimwear (Harrison2, self-released); Liu Qingyuan for Into the Silence (Peter Evans, More is More-Old Heaven)
2021 SPONSORS
